Heavy Bag Thrust

Muscles worked

The force comes from the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.

A plyometric repetition is over before a slow contraction could contribute anything, so it has to produce that force immediately on contact.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the abdominals brace the trunk so force can pass between the hips and the shoulders; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ChestAbdominalsShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.

It is filed under plyometrics, which trains the stretch-shortening cycle: loaded fast, released immediately. Contact time matters more than volume, so these belong early in a session.

What you need

These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:

• Incline Bench Pressbench + barbell
• Incline Bench Press with Bandsband + bench
• Incline Cable Chest Presscable
• Incline Dumbbell Bench With Palms Facing Indumbbell
• Incline Push-Upbody only

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 105 chest exercises in this database, 63 are listed at beginner level.